Detroit’s place as a premier NHL franchise has been gone for a few years now. The bottom-five seems like an inevitability, with even career years out of their whole roster still putting Detroit as an outside shot at a wild card.

With news recently coming out that captain Henrik Zetterberg’s lingering back injury will force him to miss at least the start of the schedule, and potentially the entire season, Detroit’s already depleted forward depth takes a huge hit. While Detroit has forever been home for veteran free agents to sign, Thomas Vanek, Frans Nielsen, Trevor Daley and Mike Green don’t exactly fire up the same level of excitement as they would’ve in, say, 2011.

Rookie Filip Zadina should give fans something to be excited about, but even if he’s able to pull off a Calder-type season, look no further to 2018 winner Mathew Barzal that it doesn’t necessarily lead to team success. There’s also the likely full-time debuts of 2016 and 2017 first-round picks Evgeny Svechnikov and Michael Rasmussen, but both still have much to prove about how their games will translate to the NHL level.

Contractually, this team is a mess. There’s currently no cap space, and seemingly almost everyone on the roster eligible for a no-move or no-trade clause managed to get one. At forward, Luke Glendening, Darren Helm, Frans Nielsen and Justin Abdelkader remain on the roster for at least the next three years (assuming no buyouts occur), with the latter two being signed until 2022 and 2023, respectively.

It isn’t hard to argue that their defensive depth stacks up as the league’s worst, with the Athletic’s Craig Custance describing them as a team with three third pairs. Their six returning NHL defencemen are all 27 or older, with just Niklas Kronwall and Nick Jensen set to become UFAs after this year. Amazingly, they’re spending more on their defence this upcoming year than Nashville.

There are some intriguing options in the “D” prospect pipeline, but considering they haven’t drafted a defenceman in the front half of the first round since… Yves Racine in 1987, it’s nothing that will be able to flip their team around without multiple more acquisitions. They don’t have anyone who projects as a true top-pair guy, and we’ll likely see a merry-go-round of Detroit prospects navigating through the Red Wings roster over the next few seasons.

Jonathan Bernier and Jimmy Howard provide a serviceable, if not outstanding tandem in net. Both have struggled at points in their careers but generally can put in an average performance, which is really all this team can ask for. Neither will likely be around the organization once their young core begins to hit their prime, so it’s almost a writeoff at this point.

Jeff Blashill enters his fourth season as Red Wings coach, with currently a playoff series loss and two years out of the playoffs under his resume so far. Although he hasn’t given fans much to be excited for under his tenure, it’s unlikely he’ll get the sack anytime soon as he has just about the lowest expectations in the league. General Manager Ken Holland seems content in riding things out, but it’s hard to understand why the team’s ownership group has decided he’s the man for the job. Most media reports show that Detroit doesn’t really want to commit to a full rebuild, and the greatest enemy might be themselves if they’re looking for a quick fix.

The thing about this team is you almost have to go through all the negatives before you can begin getting excited about the pieces they already have. Dylan Larkin, Anthony Mantha, Andreas Athanasiou are all set for big years again, but they won’t likely be anywhere close to enough to drag Detroit out of the rut they’re stuck in right now.

After an eventful and at times confusing offseason, the Carolina Hurricanes got off to a scorching start to the 2018-19 season. In their first five games, the Canes went 4-0-1 while outscoring the opposition 22-15 in all situations and 16-9 at 5v5. They were also controlling 62.4% of the unblocked shot attempts at 5v5 during…